Hey there!
My first forum post here, really glad to see the english format now   
I live in Wales, UK. I guess im pretty lucky in some respects as we get quite a few bands come over from both Europe and America, and we also have some amazing festivals. This year at Download will be my 12th year and i cant wait for it.
On the plus side we do get all the big bands coming over doing tours and playing festivals which is great, cant deny that. On the negative side thats prettymuch all we gets in many respects, we dont see allot of the fantastic smaller artists from Europe or America, I often look at European festival lineups and am quite jealous lol!
For pubs and clubs there is a metal/rock club in every major city, the smaller towns not so much sadly, but most places of any reasonably sized populace have at least the "rock type" pub somewhere.
There have been some great movements towards making discrimination of metalheads and other alternative cultures a hate crime here, thanks largely to the hard work of Sophie Lancaster's family. A tragic story of a young pretty metalhead girl who was beaten to death simply for how she looks. In the wake of her death they set up the Sophie Lancaster foundation to make this sort of thing a thing of the past here, baby steps, but they are making great progress.
For the most part there is a great and thriving underground metal scene here, though in some cases some great bands dont get the chance to shine as much as they could, but i think thats probably the same everywhere.
There is always a metal gig nearby somewhere, and you are never more than a few months away from an awesome rock/metal festival.